Gemstar to launch new weekly TV mag

DavidB. Wilkerson

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - The parent of TV Guide magazine is launching a new weekly television magazine primarily aimed at young women.

Gemstar-TV Guide said Thursday that the publication, Inside TV, will debut this spring.

It named Steve LeGrice, one of the founding editors of In Touch Magazine, to the post of editor-in-chief. LeGrice's career spans more than 30 years of magazine editing and writing in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The magazine is an attempt to adapt to the TV medium's increasing fragmentation, said John Loughlin, president of TV Guide Publishing Group, in a statement. "Inside TV will combine TV-centric news, stories, styles and trends that speak to today's young female TV enthusiasts," he said.

Increasingly segmented viewing choices, the Internet, video games and other factors have cut TV Guide's circulation from the 20-million subscriber level in the early 1970s to around 9 million today, despite an extensive 2003 redesign.

Part of the problem is that TV Guide skews toward older viewers, and Gemstar is right to "leverage its 50-plus years of experience publishing on the TV industry with a fresher looking content vehicle," said Marla Backer, analyst at Soleil Securities. Backer compared the strategy to one that has worked well at cable's TV Guide Channel, which has undergone a makeover.

Backer also told her clients that LeGrice has the right pedigree to run Inside TV, with his experience at InTouch, Star and The Daily Mail.

Shares of Gemstar
GMST
declined 12 cents to close at $5.59 on Wednesday. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
NWS, -1.47%
which has a 41-percent stake in Gemstar, was down 18 cents at $18.62.

Analysts have speculated recently that Murdoch could buy the remaining 59 percent of Gemstar and then trade or combine some of its assets with John Malone's Liberty Media
L, +0.19%
Liberty has been accumulating News Corp. stock, prompting News to adopt a poison pill. An asset swap would be a preferable way to resolve the companies' differences, observers say.

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